macskull

It's of some use defensively, I use it on my Grav/Emp as a kind of mini-phase if Phase Shift is down but it's tricky to get right because it'll detoggle if you get mezzed and if you run out of the bubble after you've cast it you lose the phase. It isn't really worth using offensively because the immobilize only lasts for a few seconds.

Keep in mind that the base value of any debuff is affected by the purple patch before any resistances are applied which makes debuffs less and less useful against higher-level-than-you enemies.

Plus, it's like... this is supposed to be a mini-nuke. The entire point of mini-nukes is to "remove hostile units."

Combustion's DoT is 7.1 seconds but it's also skipped by most Tankers and Blasters who have the opportunity to take it because it's got one of the longest animations of any power in the game and its DPA is pretty bad. (Nevermind that it has almost twice the radius as Dark Equilibrium.) Rain powers tick fast enough and (if slotted well) will be rolling close to 95% on each tick so that's pretty much irrelevant. Rain powers also have the unique ability to basically bypass the target cap - if one target dies another will start taking damage instead. The solution to "this power is advertised as high-damage but because of the realities of gameplay will rarely ever see most of that damage on a target" shouldn't be "use IOs."

Okay, fast-ticking DoT is nice. But... fifteen seconds is way too long for a power like this. I think the only other 15-second DoT powers are the rain-type powers and those are all location-based patches with higher radius and target cap and since they're location-based patches they can technically hit an infinite number of targets over their duration. Five seconds with a slower tick rate and more of the damage being frontloaded would make more sense, I think. If the original intention was to turn Dark Equilibrium into a sort of mini-nuke, these changes are getting further and further away from that.

Well... okay. But given the choice between a power that's more useful solo or on teams, or a power that's useful in any situation (because its damage is delievered up front, or at least mostly upfront) the upfront damage is the clear winner. EDIT: Dark Melee already has Shadow Maul as a DoT and having a set deliver most of its AoE output as DoT is a great way to run into the "punching dead things" problem on teams.

Back Alley Brawler is still a trainer in AP, isn't he...? EDIT: I am the dumb, nevermind. I misread the OP, or something like that.

There's a balance between teaming and soloing and the same powers won't perform the same way in both environments. DoT powers are fine when solo or on small teams because odds are good you'll get most of the damage out of them, but on larger teams most things just die before most of the DoT can take effect because of all the AoE flying around. I appreciate the attempts to bring up DM's AoE, but I don't think this is the right way to do it. If you keep the damage calculations mostly the same way they are now and increase the radius or target cap, you'll have a more useful power that contributes more meaningfully to AoE output. EDIT: Also while I have your attention (I assume) please please please please fix Phase Shift suppressing while mezzed in PvP. It's incredibly frustrating to the point where people are changing builds around to take Hibernate because of a bugged power.

That may be an improvement but generally speaking DoT powers are less useful than their numbers might show, especially on teams. It's nice if you can land Dark Equilibrium but if the mobs are dead before half the damage has landed then it's only doing half the damage is should be. Again, if the intention is that the power rival other mini-nukes, the damage should be consistent and delivered up front. If there's some DoT in there, great, but that shouldn't be where the majority of the damage is coming from. It seems like you're balancing this around edge cases of Scrappers near damage cap, or Brutes with tons of Fury and outside buffs and... I don't think that's a super-common scenario to be balancing around. Yes, the original version of this changed power could do lots of damage but that was only under very specific and uncommon circumstances. And if it can clear minions on an SO build... so what? On an SO build you're looking at 45 second recharge outside of Hasten/other buffs and even then you're probably giving up acc or damage slotting to get there. It is still far worse than other 45-second PBAoEs even on SOs. EDIT: I feel like when you start messing with the power that much you're removing it too much from its original form to the point where it's not even the same power anymore aside from the fact that it's doing +end (and only sometimes).

The problem with this point of view is that if you're using Dark Equilibrium to refill your endurance, it's not going to do nearly as much damage as the numbers upthread have shown, and those are showing that even at best case when you're near 100% endurance (so it is effectively just a PBAoE attack at that point since you're getting little to no benefit from the +end) it's mediocre compared to more spammable PBAoE attacks from other sets. I don't think anyone here is having an emotional response, I'm just trying to point out that the power is basically being sold as and balanced around being a mini-nuke when today's changes have made it more of an okay PBAoE even in the best of cases. You don't skip Lightning Rod or Shield Charge or Savage Leap, but in its current form I'm betting a lot of builds will skip Dark Equilibrium.

While I would normally agree with you, the rub here is how it's been presented in the OP (emphasis mine): That, and the justification for removing the ability to crit because the other mini-nuke powers don't crit, leaves DE in a weird spot. It's now basically an okay AoE power with a recharge time that's far too long and in reality has no similarity to the other mini-nuked powers except its recharge time. It's got a smaller radius, it's got a smaller target cap, and the extra damage within a 3ft radius was removed, and it does appreciably less damage than the other mini-nukes. While it may be true that the original version was overtuned, this latest patch has swung too far in the other direction and is trying to change too many things at once.

The +special was 32.5% with Defender numbers, about 1/3 of what Power Boost normally does for Defenders. To be honest, +special has extremely limited utility in PvE and can be kind of overtuned in PvP so without the extra +special it's easier to balance. It's just that now there's nothing going for that power except a small damage boost.

Since the justification for adjusting the Dark Equilibrium’s damage calculation and removing crits was its comparison to other mini nuke powers, can its radius and target cap be increased to match those?

Two points: Now that Empowering Circuit doesn’t grant +special (I am very much okay with this) the only thing it does is boost damage. I feel like there should be some secondary effect especially given its short duration, whether that be a tohit buff or a recovery/regen buff. Call me old-fashioned but I don’t think a pet that’s targetable and affectable should have duration associated with it. Galvanic Sentinel is going to be one of those powers that is a pain to use because of how often it needs to be resummoned. This might be a good time to revisit all pet summons that behave like this (Dark Servant and patron pool pets come to mind).

I don't know the exact design formula changes for making the jump from normal to epic/patron power, but there are plenty of inconsistencies even between similar powers (some holds have 16s base recharge, some have 32s, and so on). Soul Drain is just the most egregious one.

A lot of the hero epic pools were not properly balanced for being epic pool powers, compared to their patron pool counterparts. For another totally asinine example of this, check out Defender/Corruptor Dark Mastery and Soul Mastery - they both get Soul Drain with identical buff values but the Soul Mastery version has twice the base recharge.

Those are both pseudopets though (both of which are the same for every AT so no AT can actually leverage them as much as they should be able to) so it’s not really fair to compare them like that. To the damage buff thing, I think the “portion is enhanceable and a portion scales” seems like a reasonable mechanic.

That’s fair. I knew about the ET one (but their crit removes the self damage so it at least does something) and there’s a power in KM that recharges Build Up when it crits. I would be okay with a reduced-scale crit on Dark Consumption a la Total Focus. Depending on how the damage DR’s the proposed changes will absolutely make this power objectively worse on Brutes than either Tankers or Scrappers.

I think having a diminishing returns curve on damage buffs for Dark Consumption sets a dangerous precedent. There’s probably not going to be an intuitive way to see how damage buffs affect it outside of actually testing it and I’ll bet a billion inf it won’t be adequately documented in-game. I don’t really agree with removing the critical aspect of it either especially considering how long the recharge is. If the amount of damage this power can potentially put out is such a big deal, reduce the base damage or don’t have it scale with endurance. The “damage scales with endurance” schtick is cool and all but if you need to impose artificial limits on the power to keep it from being too good, the simplest solution is just to lower its damage rather than try and implement diminishing returns and make it not crit. Are there any other Scrapper non-epic attacks that either don’t crit or otherwise have some special feature associated with them? I can’t think of any off the top of my head.

Nothing's wrong with Recall Friend. I'm assuming the "bug" you're seeing is happening in Atlas Park and in that case it's not a bug, it's a feature. Sometime before shutdown Atlas Park was refreshed and now has parts of the zone where each character experiences their own "version" of that area and can't affect or be affected by other players, mostly to prevent dozens of players from fighting over the same mobs after Galaxy City got removed as one of the starter zones.

Does the +special from one boost the +special of the other? Given the recent nerf to +special boosting -special, I'd say that interaction is definitely a bug. On the topic at hand, I don't care at all about Farsight benefiting from PB but Fade benefiting from it is obviously a bug and I'm surprised it's gone this long without getting fixed.

DC's base recharge is just too long to be this insane outlier like everyone's thinking it's going to be.

I'd much rather go back to the pre-I24 proc system.

Literally none of those sets play anything alike, I have no idea what you are smoking but I want some.